


these hallowed halls

by okayantigone



Series: birdhouse - Perfect Court AU [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Andreil is endgame, Eating Disorders, F/M, Gen, Jerejean is endgame, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Perfect Court, Polyamory Negotiations, Scarification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 10:32:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11355657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: Neil’s smile is everything. Jean looks at it, the wicked curve of it, the sharp white teeth. He tries to remember it like that. He wants every memory of this smile to be sun-drenched, and sugar-dipped. Carefully, in his head, he rearranges the memory around is, cuts Riko out entirely, and finds the strength to walk away for good.





	these hallowed halls

Jean pulls up in the hotel VIP parking space, between the Maserati and the Viper, and switches off the ignition. He lets himself breathe for a few minutes, eyes closed, still safe behind the tinted glass of his window. When he can’t stall anymore, he throws the door open, and steps out into the brutal light of the South Carolina sun, sliding sunglasses on his face as he goes.

Riko is leaning on the Viper, left hand hidden in his pocket. His eyes are closed, though Jean doesn’t even for a moment let himself think that he’s unaware of what’s going on around him.

Kevin is arguing animatedly with the bell boy about transporting their equipment into the hotel. Of course, he’d rather carry the bags up fifteen flights of stairs himself, than let some know-nothing do any damage. Of course.  
In the light of the sun, Nathaniel looks even more pale and washed out than usual, squinting his bright blue eyes. He is smiling carelessly at something Andrew has to say about Kevin, as the two pull their bags out of the Maserati.

“I won,” he says, departing from Andrew’s side to approach Jean. Jean regards him passively.

“Andrew let me drive the second leg.” he gestures at the car, “We beat Riko here by a good five minutes. We even had time for lunch.”

Of course. Of course they made it into a street race. Jean doesn’t even have to ask whose idea it was. Equal parts instigation from Andrew and a sheer lust for victory from Neil. And the Maserati. Andrew never could resist a fast car.

“You took a shortcut,” Riko sounds bored. “We’d have gotten here at the same time, if Kevin hadn’t insisted on –“

He doesn’t finish his thought. Kevin probably insisted that they stop at some historical location to take pictures.

“I don’t understand why we couldn’t have just flown here and expensed it.” Neil says.

“I tried. The board nearly took my head off. They wouldn’t sign off on so much as coach tickets.” Riko sounds less bored and more annoyed. Jean takes a step back.

Riko doesn’t even acknowledge him. He rarely does anymore.

“Shall we go check in, if Kevin is done shouting abuse at the hotel staff?” Andrew asks, in a voice tat suggests it makes no different to him.

Neil takes hold of the suitcase handle that Andrew is holding, their fingers brushing together.

“Sure,” Neil says cheerfully.

Riko is already walking towards Kevin purposefully, preparing to tip generously to make up for Kevin’s sunny attitude. He rests a hand on the small of Kevin’s back, says something to him quietly. They follow into the hotel. Jean slings his bag over his shoulder and walks behind them.

He waits for them to check in, Riko and Kevin in one apartment suite, and Andrew and Neil in the one next door, before handing his ID, and signing down for his own room, two floors below.

He hasn’t shared rooms, let alone a floor with his old teammates long enough that he doesn’t feel the need to start now. He’d have booked a different hotel, if it wouldn’t make the logistics of their trip unnecessarily complicated.

He lets Riko and Kevin go ahead into the elevator, mostly because the thought of being in a confined space with Riko makes his skin crawl.

“There’s room for one more,” Kevin says, lacking in tact in a classic Kevin move.

Andrew gives a sigh like moving is literally paining him, and drags his suitcase in. “We’re all going to the same floor,” he says, as if Kevin is being especially thick right now, and pushes the button. Before the doors for the elevator close, Kevin can see him push a couple more buttons.

Neil turns to Jean, as bright and smiling as he’s ever been.

“Need help with your bag?” Jean asks.

Neil adjusts its weight on his shoulder, and turns the impossibly bright smile to him. “Nope. That’s my toys in there.”

Jean bristles. Half the time he forgets what Neil is. Usually, Neil is so soft, so full of his smiles, and a quiet warmth that Jean lets himself not remember all that softness hides is jagged edges.

“My stuff’s in Andrew’s suitcase. And I can always nick Riko’s shirts if need be.”

Always. Like it’s a given. Like Neil gets to just walk in, and take Riko’s stuff, and the most he’ll get for it as a half-hearted reprimand. But he does. He gets to do just that. Jean should stop forgetting who Neil is.

Neil shifts on his feet, fidgets with his watch. Jean watches him slide a hand, pushing his thumb under the waistband of his jeans, and closes his eyes.

“Jean,” Neil says softly. “Please don’t be mad at me.”

Neil never says please, not to Jean, at least. That’s a word reserved for the likes of Nathan Wesninski, and Kengo Moriyama. Not Jean. Neil never says it in front of Andrew, because he has different ways to beg him, and as far as Jean knows Riko never managed to drag it out of him. Nor the Master. But there Neil is, looking down at his worn sneakers, and saying “please don’t be mad at me.”

“I love you.” Jean had said, very soft, very quiet. Je t’aime. “And I’m proud of you.” Je suis fier de toi.  
Neil closed his eyes, rested his forehead on Jean’s collarbone. “You too,” he whispered. But he never quite managed to get the words out. “You’re the only one who ever says it to me,” he adds and kisses the corner of Jean’s mouth.  
“Does that bother you?” Jean had asked, gently tracing his thumb over Neil’s tattooed cheekbone.  
Neil shook his head. “No. They have their ways. I know the rules. I’d never ask it of them. Maybe Andrew will… eventually. Does it bother you?”  
“Does what?”  
“That I can’t. Say it back to you, I mean. Because you know I do, right? You know I do, more than anything.”  
“More than Riko?” with the way Neil was, attached to their King, Jean found it hard to believe, but Neil didn’t hesitate for a moment.  
“Yes. More than him.”  
“And Kevin?”  
Neil raised an eyebrow at him. His relationship with Kevin was a complicated mess. When they weren’t tumbling in bed together, they were constantly at each other’s throats.  
“Yes.” he said simply, nodding. He didn’t deny loving Kevin.  
“And –“ here, Jean wondered if he should stop, but he never knew how to not break his own heart. “More than Andrew?”  
Neil looked pained. “No,” he said, because he refused to lie to Jean. Perhaps loving Andrew had done him some good. “Not more. But close.”  
“But not the same.” Jean clarified. “Less.”  
“Jean,” Neil said softly. “Don’t do this.”  
Jean took Neil’s hand, tracing his knuckles. Unscarred, for the most part. Certainly not scarred from breaking. He kissed the fleur lis on his wrist.  
“I love you,” Jean repeated softly. “And you can’t say it back to me.”  
Neil looked down. Jean wasn’t sure if he was ashamed, or angry, or frustrated, or sad – it was hard to tell sometimes, with Neil.  
“I’m sorry. You know why I can’t. Jean –“  
He pulls his hand away, and Jean doesn’t try to hold onto it. He cradles it against his chest, pressing against the anatomically correct heart tattoo resting against his real heart, nestled amidst his scars as a representation of Andrew in Neil’s life.  
“Jean, you deserve better. More. I wish I could give to you. Maybe you should find someone who can.” he says it out in a rush, hurried, breathless, and then looks up at Jean horrified. Jean thinks he never wants to see that face on Neil again.  
“Are you breaking up with me?”  
Neil flinches like he’d been slapped. No. Not like that, because Neil doesn’t flinch when he is slapped. He takes it, and then he hits back. Neil flinches.  
“No,” he says, quiet and incredulous. “Are you - ?”  
It’s Jean’s turn to be ashamed, to look at his hands. It was the first thing he said. Because he had been thinking of it. It was violent, and toxic – this constant back and forth with Neil. Neil who loved Riko, and Kevin and the Ravens and Edgar Allan, and exy, and wouldn’t leave them for the world, and Jean, who refused to breathe the same air as Riko but had to, and so- of course he’d been thinking of it.  
“No,” he lies. “Of course not. It’s just – how you phrased it. ”  
“I meant,” Neil waves a hand vaguely. “You know. I’m – I’m seeing other people. I have Kevin, and Riko, and Andrew… And Kevin has Thea. I mean, Riko only has me, and Kevin, and he has to share us but – I mean. Maybe you should. Should try… to see someone else. Who isn’t me.”  
It was true. In their fucked up little pentagram of a relationship, where all the arrows pointed everywhere, Jean only had one arrow pointing at him.  
“Maybe,” he allowed finally.  
“And maybe,” Neil spoke in the quiet measured way in which he’d delivered his captain speeches in his final year at Evermore. It was Riko-speech. Carefully rehearsed and measured out. Practiced. Had Neil – been talking to Riko about this? About Jean? “maybe we should not pretend that this is something that it isn’t.”  
No. Those weren’t Riko-words. They were Andrew’s.  
“And what,” Jean recognizes how cold and ugly his voice sounds and hates it. “What exactly is this not?”  
He expects the tone to gear Neil up for a fight, but his boy just looks horribly sad.  
“It’s not – good.” Neil says finally. “It’s not good for you.”  
It’s the last answer Jean expected from him.  
“Jean, what I’m saying is,” Neil puts his hands up, like he expects Jean to shoot him, “that you are… wonderful. And amazing. And you’ve saved my life. And I would not have gotten out of Castle Evermore alive if it wasn’t for you.” It’s the first time Jean hears Neil admit it out loud. Between Riko’s possessive rage, and Kevin’s jealous obsession, and Andrew’s cold callous dismissal of the worth of whatever misguided feelings he and Neil had for each other, Jean had been the one to nurture the softness in Neil instead of punishing it. He’d been ready, and willing to love him without rules. “But maybe,” Neil continues softly, “You should find someone who does for you what you did for me. And – “ he reaches hesitantly. Jean wraps his fingers around Neil’s wrist. “And at the end of the day, whether you find that person or not, I will still be yours.”  
He turns his hand around in Jean’s grip, so the tattoo is facing him. “And this will still be here. And even if I can’t say it. I will still.”  
He pulls his hand back and signs the word love. Even that effort seems like too much, because he lets his hand drop as soon as he’s shaped it.  
“I love you,” Jean repeats. “I love you very much.”  
Neil brings his smile up, teary, and wonderful. He doesn’t for a moment doubt that in his own fucked up way Nathaniel Wesninski loves him. But Neil is right. This isn’t good for him.  
“You don’t have to keep the tattoo,” Jean says gently, “if you don’t want it.” he absent-mindedly rubs his cheekbone, where he’s branded for life as property.  
Neil shakes his head. “I want it. I want to always carry your heart on my sleeve.”  
That had been almost two months ago. Two months in which Neil carefully maintained the same frequency of visits to Jean’s apartment, the same amount of phone calls, and text messages but Jean recognized the hesitation in it. The fear, that the other shoe would drop and Jean would ask him to stop phoning at three am because he has someone over.

 

In that moment, Jean hates him.

“I’m not mad,” Jean says finally, exasperated. “Not at you.”

Neil looks up, and smiles, his relief palpable.

As soon as the elevator door closes behind them, he drops his duffel to the ground and wraps his arms around Jean’s waist, hiding his face in his chest, breahing him in. Hesitantly Jean rests a hand on his back, and feels the ridges oh his holster.

“You’re armed,” he notes.

“Foreign place. It doesn’t matter. Kiss me,” Neil is looking up at him, standing on his tip toes, trying to reach Jean for a kiss. How can he resist the most beautiful boy in the world?

He leans down and gives Neil a slow thorough kiss that lasts well until the elevator doors slide open on Jean’s floor.

“Do you want me to come to your room?” Neil asks, a little breathless. He doesn’t mean just for sex, although they usually end up doing that as well. He means to see Jean. Check on him. The whole long-distance thing only ever works so well with people adjusted enough, and secure enough that nothing bad will happen while the other is away. Nathaniel has never had that luxury. He needs to touch, taste, see, make sure this is real.

Jean thinks back to his last lonely year at Evermore, when he didn’t have the strength to make the drive up to West Virginia, or even to turn his phone camera on, and let himself see the inside of the Nest again from Neil’s side of the screen.

“Would you like to?” he asks gently. He knows Neil wouldn’t presume to come in unless he’s invited. Finely attuned to what the people he loves need, he knows the absolute lack of personal space Kevin and Riko tolerate is not something Jean can handle. Then again, he’s been learning a lot about personal space from Andrew too.

“Yes please.”

It’s a nice double room done in generic hotel cream tones, with a pretty view to the hotel pool. Neil looks around it and promptly scoffs. Jean has no doubt that Riko and Kevin have been spoiling him rotten since he left Edgar Allan, what with booking the VIP suites wherever they go, and he suspects there’s at least a little spite involved in expensing as much as possible to Edgar Allan, and spending Moriyama money, but he can’t bring himself to do it.

He’s alright with his double room. As far as he’s concerned there’s nothing wrong with it, but Jean, a voice suspiciously sounding like Neil enters his mind, you’re fine in a one bedroom Brooklyn apartment too, when you could afford a penthouse.

He tells the Neil in his head to shut up, and the real life Neil beside him to come closer. Kissing Neil is the easiest thing in the world. Having his arm around Neil’s waist is the easiest thing in the world.

“No, no wait,” Neil nudges him away. “Let me disarm first, and then – “ he’s already moved, shrugging off his Edgar Allen jacket (which reads MINYARD #5, which WESNINSKI #4 definitely is not), and taking off his shoulder holster. He checks the guns, removes the clip, and sets them on the dresser. Then he melts against Jean again.

Jean kisses him, and pulls him. Neil curls against his chest with a happy smile, kissing his neck softly.

“I missed you.”

“Yeah,” Jean says. “Missed you too.” he means it.

“We don’t have to be at the ready until the evening. Do you think I might just … forget to go upstairs?”

Jean smiles at that brazen beautiful boy. “Yeah. I think you might.”

It’s dark outside when the knocking at the door wakes them. Neil is curled into Jean’s chest, soft with sleep, but before Jean can move to the door, his eyes snap open. He makes a sign for Jean to shush, and carefully gets out of bed. He’s wearing just his jeans, and his bare feet sink into the carpet. Quietly, he slides a magazine into his gun, and walks to the door.

“Yeah?” he calls out, voice rough with sleep.

“It’s me. We need you upstairs, it’s time to get ready.”

Neil breathes out, opens the door, carefully pointing the gun at the floor, and smiles as Riko fills up the doorway.

“Hello sir,” he says, voice dripping with warmth. The simple affection in those words sets Jean’s teeth on edge.

“Hello,” Riko cups Neil’s cheek, running his thumb over his tattoo. “It’s almost time for the bullshit. We need to be getting ready. Did you even bring a suit?”

Neil looks affronted. “Of course I did.”

“Good. Me and Kevin are heading to the lobby bar. He might already be there, actually. Can you get ready, and get Andrew and go?”

He doesn’t look at Jean. Doesn’t acknowledge Jean.

Jean remembers punching his name out of Riko’s mouth at Neil’s graduation. He remembers Neil and Kevin looking silent and impassive, letting the fight happen. Neil would rather lose a limb than hurt Jean. And Kevin – well. Kevin probably liked it.

He remembers Riko’s smug little smile. “Hello Jean,” and he remembers leaping at him, and knocking him to his knees with the first hit. “Keep my name out of your fucking mouth.”

Thank God the media hadn’t gotten wind of that one.

Neil is leaning into Riko’s hand, smiling absently. “Sure. I’ll be down in twenty.”

Riko lets his hand fall to his side, but Neil catches it.

“Riko,” he murmurs. He rarely if ever calls him by his name. “Don’t let Kevin drink too much.”

Riko’s smile is gone, as if it had never been there, mouth tight. “Already slipped the bartender a hundred.”

Neil nods. “Okay. Good.”

Riko nods. “Good?” waiting in case Neil has something else to say.

“Have you eaten today?”

Riko looks at a spot right over Neil’s shoulder.

Neil’s thumb presses his knuckles. “Have you?”

“Yeah. Kevin ordered roomservice.”

He pulls his hand out of Neil’s grasp. “Twenty minutes,” he warns, and walks off. Neil closes the door behind him, and turns around. His smile is tense now, as he carefully collects his shirt, and jacket, and weaponry.

“Wanna come up and help me dress?”

“No,” Jean says. He doesn’t mean to sound quite so harsh. He needs to prepare himself for the event. Tonight is just schmoozing. Riko and Kevin have to smile nicely for the cameras. The Perfect Court has to pose for pictures. Jean has to keep from punching anyone too important in the face. Or from having a panic attack. Or both, maybe at the same time.

Neil doesn’t take it personally. “Okay,” he says. “Me and Andrew are gonna pick you up though?”  
“Sure. Knock on my door.”

Neil gives him a little wave as he leaves.

Jean has just knotted his tie when the knock arrives. Andrew and Neil are a matched pair with their light eyes and cold stony expressions. Neil looks absolutely displeased, which cannot possibly have been Andrew’s fault.

“I might need to slip out tonight,” he says. “Main branch business.”

“Isn’t it exhausting doing both Riko and Ichirou’s dirty work?” Jean asks, with just as much bite as he means.

Neil stands in front of him, carefully nudges his hands away, and undoes his tie, starting to knot it again.

“No. I only pick up the slack for Ichirou when my father can’t.”

“But it’s getting to be a little more often isn’t it?” Andrew says, bored.

The smile Neil turns to him is the opposite of the sweet soft thing Jean had kissed in the elevator. “Yeah. It is.”

He tightens the knot, and taps it with two fingers. “There. Looks nicer now.”

Jean is just impressed that Neil knows how to tie a double Windsor but seems completely incapable of adequately dressing himself without help. And, the Neil voice in his head adds, your idea of fashion consists of black jeans and black shirts. Jean, as usual, shushes it.

“Do you have everything?” Andrew asks. “ID, wallet, car keys, room keys, phone?” he lists in a monotone.

Jean automatically checks each pocket for the assorted items, as does, he notices, Neil.

“Yeah,” he says, as Neil says “Sure.”

Kevin and Riko are waiting at the bar. Riko is straight faced, his press-face on. Kevin has an arm around his shoulders, leaning on him with more force than he should.

Jean automatically steps in to take Kevin who doesn’t seem at all appreciative which is usual.

“How much did he drink?” Neil asks in German.

Riko looks at Kevin. “Definitely more than he should have.” he answers. “But he’s going to be good. As long as we keep him from any of the drinks tables.”  
“Is Thea coming?” Neil asks.

“Yes. She’s recruiting too.”

Neil sighs in obvious relief. “Good. He keeps in check around her.”

“I swear it didn’t use to be that bad,” Riko says.

“Are we going?” Kevin demands. Even though Jean can tell he is drunk, to the untrained eye he looks as present as ever – a handsome celebrity at the peak of his athletic career.

“Yeah,” Neil says in English. “We’re going. Come on.”

In the limo, Neil sits in Jean’s lap, even though there’s enough room for him to comfortably not be doing that. Jean doesn’t particularly mind, since Neil’s face obscures his vision of Riko, and his kisses keep his mind off the unnecessary hassle that this entire exercise in publicity is.

Predictably, halfway through what is one of the most boring events Jean has ever attended, Neil disappears, presumably to off someone on Ichirou’s orders, and Kevin leaves with Thea to her hotel room. Riko is in the middle of performing his usual role of a charming talented youth with a brilliant future, so Jean lets himself have a few bites from the open buffet, feeling for the first time, that he hasn’t eaten since morning. He makes a plate and heads for the balcony. With not a lot of looking he locates Andrew, leaning over the railing and smoking quietly.

“Neil says you had a fight,” Andrew says without preamble. “He was very upset.”

“We didn’t have a fight.” Jean defends.

“Neil loves you.” The words roll of Andrew’s tongue, and he says it like he doesn’t care. “He loves you enough to recognize that in the long term maybe he isn’t the best of you.”

“Does he – does he tell you literally everything?” Jean asks, incredulous. With him Neil is honest. As honest as he can be, but also a mystery. A quiet skittish thing with teeth and secrets.

“Yes,” Andrew says simply.

They don’t say anything for a while. Andrew smokes with intent.

“You’re good to him,” Andrew says. “And you were good to us in the Nest.”

“But?”

“There is no but.”

Jean takes a moment to realize that this is the closest to a thank you he will ever get.

He nods. “You’re good to him too. And he cares about you very much.” He doesn’t use the l-word. He isn’t sure Andrew wants to hear it.

“I know that. It’s enough for me.”

It’s not accusation but it feels like one.

He ends up leaving the event early. He’s not sure if Kevin plans on coming back to their hotel at all, and he knows Andrew will wait for Neil, and there’s no way he’s getting in a car with Riko alone, so there’s that.

He sets an alarm for the next day, and goes to bed.

He wakes up just a minute before it goes off, with no small amount of self-satisfaction. At the hotel gym he runs on the mill, and pretends not to notice Riko passing by him on his way to the pool. He imagines following him, waiting for him at the end, and pushing his head underwater. He imagines Neil’s knives.

He goes back to his room for a shower, and dresses weather appropriately – i. e. in a shirt that’s only a bit thinner than his other shirts, but still long-sleeved, hiding his scars. He slides his fiddle-ring on his thumb, and his sunglasses, and heads out. Breakfast is included in the hotel price, but Jean is only self-indulgent enough to go to the nearest Starbucks to get real coffee. He figures he might buy into Andrew’s good graces for the day by getting him a venti cup just full of whipped cream. And then he might get punched by Kevin.

The place isn’t very crowded, as it shouldn’t be on a Saturday morning, and the barista that greets him is pure absolute sunshine. His smile is actually blinding.

“Hello and good morning, how can I help you?” he asks in a southern drawl so saccharine it sounds as fake and movie-like as Neil’s British accent, when he’s not bothering to hide it.

“Can I please get a venti chai latte, please?”

He’s already fingering the few tenners he’d shoved in his pocket with his phone and key card.

“Sure!” says barista sunshine. “What’s your name?”

“Jean.”

He watches as the pretty boy scrawls SHAWN in beautiful looping letters.

“Um,” says Jean. “That’s not exactly ah –“ He takes his sunglasses off, and points at his cheek.

“Oh,” whispers the beautiful barista, whose nametag reads“Remy”, and who for some reason looks familiar.

“Oh my god.” he sounds absolutely mortified. “You are –“ he gestures at Jean’s face.

Jean nods. “Aha.” He feels like an absolute asshole.

“I am so sorry,” Remy says, writing his name on another cup. “I am so, so sorry. I’m such a fan, I can’t believe –“

He writes JEAN MOREAU #3 and adds little hearts around it. It’s juvenile, but, Jean is ready to admit, a little endearing.

He fumbles with the coffee, spills milk, his hands shaking, and Jean wishes he hadn’t pointed the mistake out at all. Fine, fine, he could be Shawn.

When Remy hands him the cup shakily, Jean easily slides his hands over his, covering them. “Hey, hey it’s okay. It happens often with you Americans,” he jokes. He doesn’t often joke, but it makes the annoyingly familiar Remy smile.

“Can I also get a venti of the sweetest most saccharine drink you can make for Andy, a grande jelly Frappuccino for Niall and two venti brewed coffees for Asshole #1 and #2? They’re for my team.” He says it with a perfectly straight face, but he supposes he’s making this guy’s day right now by letting him make drinks for the fabled Perfect Court.

“I –sure. Let me just –“

Jean sips his own coffee while watching Remy make the drinks and arrange them in a cardboard cup holder.

“Are you in town long?” he asks distractedly.

“Not really. We have to schmooze at a couple of events, so it’s nothing fun. Except today. We’re watching a USC practice scrimmage. In no official capacity, of course, since we would all be recruiting for different teams.”

“Oh,” Remy says. “Well I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to have you. They’re having a few alumni visiting this weekend too – for the same schmoozing events probably.”

Jean raises an eyebrow.

“Some of the university kids come here,” Remy explains absently. “I overhear things,” he winks, as he sets the two brewed drinks next to one another.  
He doesn’t let Jean pay, insisting that he let the drinks be on the house. It’s not until Jean is after the café that he realizes two things.

He knows where he recognizes Remy from. And the receipt he got handed has a number scrawled on it.

“I cannot believe,” Kevin says, “that you saw Jeremy Knox and didn’t recognize him.” He’s holding his Asshole #2 cup like his life depends on it.

Neil had managed to snag Riko’s phone to Instagram it, captioned “when the barista recognizes you”. jeremyknoxofficial had immediately liked the photo. Jean wanted to die.

“I cannot believe he gave you his number!”

And while Kevin sounds affronted and ready to defend his favorite exy player’s honor, Neil sounds absolutely thrilled. He’s alternating between drinking everyone’s coffee but his own, and checking everyone’s phone but his own. At least the ones that are within arm’s reach of him.

Andrew is quietly sipping his sugar-filled monstrosity at the coffee table, as though his gorgeous naked boyfriend isn’t leaning up against an equally naked and gorgeous Kevin Day in bed. Then again, Jean supposes, Andrew has nothing to be jealous of, when Kevin is his too.

Riko is in the shower, with the door ajar so he can listen in. And so Neil can listen in on him.

“Yes,” Jean says, pained. “And I made an ass out of myself.”

“But he gave you his number after,” Neil says. “I ran it – it’s his actual personal phone number for personal use.”

“How did you already –“ Jean begins to ask but decides against it. Neil just gives him his beautiful innocent smile.

“Misuse of Moriyama resources will get you far in life.”

Andrew lets out a dry “Ha!” but doesn’t otherwise comment. Jean thinks that he too is a misuse of Moriyama resources, but he can’t phrase that to Neil of all people, who came into Edgar Allan bruised and terrified from Millport-middle-of-nowhere, and for whom becoming Riko’s property was infinitely better than falling back in his father’s hands.

“Will you call him?” Kevin asks.

His thumb is rubbing over Neil’s shoulder, and Jean’s eyes trace the lines of the small knife tattooed there knuckle to knuckle.

“I don’t know,” he admits. He’s thinking about it. He wants to.

Jeremy Knox. The brightest boy in Class I exy. The brightest boy in professional exy. The exact opposite of Riko and everything Edgar Allan stands for.

“I just want to know what he was doing serving coffee there,” Andrew says. “Curiouser and curiouser.”

“Maybe being a San Francisco Flamingo doesn’t pay as well as one might expect,” Riko says.

His voice is so startling to Jean that he flinches. He’d allowed himself to forget that he was even there. He’s drying his hair, facing the open wardrobe, and Jean gets a good look of his tattoo. There’s something, that wasn’t there before.  
The coiled dragon on a cloud has a naked blade dripping blood between its teeth. Jean realizes he must have gotten it after he left the Nest, because he’s never seen it before.

A knife on Kevin’s thumb. A blade on Riko’s back. Neil leaning against Kevin’s warmth, smiling a private smile.

He thinks of pressing alcohol soaked cotton wads to Neil’s hip, to clean out the open wound, recognizing the fused kanji for clever and child. Riko.

“He carved his name into you,” he’d said shaking with fury.

“It’s not what you think, Jean,” Neil had pleaded, putting his hand around Jean’s wrist. “I asked him to – you don’t understand, you’re leaving, you’re all leaving, and I don’t know if –“

The scar is covered by the bedsheets, barely.

Andrew walks across the room to hand Neil his drink so Neil can have the last few sips.

“No, I actually know that,” Kevin says, because of course he knows everything about Jeremy Knox ever, “When he’s in town he always does a few shifts at the coffeeshop he used to work with when he was attending USC. He said as much in an interview.”

Neil laughs and kisses him.

Jean feels like prey. In this room, full of people who belong to each other so purely and absolutely, he is nothing.

In the moments it had taken him to think it, Riko was already half dressed, and some not-so-polite remarks about what being on any other team but theirs was had been exchanged.

“But,” Neil was saying, “I quite liked the foxes. I almost signed with them, until you two showed up. I like Dan Wilds.”

“You must admire her tenacity. She makes an excellent coach,” Kevin agrees, always game to talk anything exy.

“That’s odd,” Andrew says, ignoring Kevin’s remark. “I almost signed to PSU too.”

Neil rewards him with another beautiful smile for that and leans across Kevin to kiss him.

“We might have met then too. See? We’re fated.”

From anyone else the words might have been a joke, but the look in Neil’s eyes lets Jean know that he means it.

Andrew knocks his knuckles against the heart tattoo on Neil’s chest. He isn’t smiling, but he might as well be. He rests a hand on Kevin’s shoulder, not touching him anymore than he has to, but still there.

“So will you ring captain sunshine?” he asks. “Might be good for your disposition.”

Behind him Jean can feel Riko think of and then not say something that would get him punched again.

“Yeah. I think I will. We might get drinks before the scrimmage. I guess I might catch up with you there.”

Neil’s smile is everything. Jean looks at it, the wicked curve of it, the sharp white teeth. He tries to remember it like that. He wants every memory of this smile to be sun-drenched, and sugar-dipped. Carefully, in his head, he rearranges the memory around is, cuts Riko out entirely, and finds the strength to walk away for good. The door to their suite closes with a quite note of finality.

Jean picks up the phone and dials. “I am calling to make a complaint about a coffee I ordered this morning, an incredibly rude barista misspelled my name –“

He touches his face. Halfway through getting the words out, he realizes that finally, he’s smiling.


End file.
